Welcome to the Middle-earth Minutes Posterous blog. We will post short items of interest here in order to the keep the official site for the podcast only. To listen, download, or subscribe to the MEM Podcast, please visit: middleearthminutes.com
News, Views, and Miscellaneous from the Middle-earth Minutes Podcast
We were doing so well with our every-two-week schedule, too!
Micah and I had to skip Middle-earth Minutes this last weekend (we like to record on Sunday afternoons) due to the youngest Hobbit taking part in the local Community Theater's production of Peter Cottontail. She's been rehearsing for 6 weeks and had three performances this weekend. The kids' grandparents drove down to the Middle Farthing to enjoy the Sunday matinee, too. So we apologize for missing the show. We should be recording this weekend. And pretty soon Middle-earth Minutes will be heard LIVE on Middle-earth Network Radio if I can fit that into the Sunday radio schedule.
We had planned on discussing Morgoth (Melkor) and Sauron this time, but that is too much to cover in one episode so we'll end up spreading it over a couple shows. Also, we will acquiesce (that's not the correct word!) to listener requests to include more Lord Of The Rings Online (LOTRO) discussions into the show. We're still brain-storming on exactly how to do that, but it'll be fun.
Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you soon.
For those who subscribe to Middle-earth Minutes in iTunes, you may have noticed that all of the episodes have re-loaded in your podcast library. There may even be duplicates (if not more) now.
There are a couple reasons for this. First, we found out that the company we use to host the files is doing away with audio only support; they have decided to only host video series (Vodcasts). We have always had a backup host as well. In fact, all episodes are backed-up 7 ways 'til Sunday in order to ensure that they always exist. Last night I spend a few hours switching from the primary to the secondary host; editing things where necessary. The feed was switched twice in the process to ensure that no disruption in availability occurred during the process (believe me, it does make sense). Its all back to normal now but, as I've seen happen in the past, iTune's industrious aggregator wen't out and grabbed all available episodes all over again - thus possible duplicates in your iTunes Podcast library.
Second, and something that I've been meaning to do for a long while, is that each episode name has been shortened to the acronym "MEM..." etc. It has long bothered me that the show title has been repeated with the episode title, i.e. "Middle-earth Minutes - Middle-earth Minutes 12: Longing For The Lonely Mountain". From now on each episode name will will be truncated with the acronym instead. Looks a lot better and we can say "Em-ee-em" during the show. Bonus!
We apologize if your iTunes library suddenly became overcrowded. Just delete any episode that doesn't start with "MEM", and everything should be fine going forward. Unless, of course, we have to switch hosts again.
We have had this blog at Posterous for a while now and had, in the past, used it under the name Middle-earth Seconds. It was the "little brother" of Middle-earth Minutes where we'd post short audio clips (crudely recorded on an iPod) of This Day In Middle-earth. Well, with the most recent changes in the MEM podcast this seemed like the perfect place to keep an all encompassing blog - where we can post thoughts and ideas about all things Tolkien, or announcements, pictures, etc. from the MEM studio.
"Why not just post these things on the Middle-earth Minutes website?", you may ask. We'd like to keep that as strictly the home base of the podcast. That way new visitors that land on the main page for the 1st time will see that each post includes audio from the latest MEM podcast. If they enjoy what they hear enough to be a regular visitor, and even friend us on the Middle-earth Minutes Facebook page or follow us on Twitter, they will then have the chance to see these posts from the blog. These will (if all works as it should) be disseminated to the aforementioned two services.
So the new name of this site is Middle-earth Minutes Blog, and we hope that you find some enjoyment from it. For the most part we will not be re-blogging news stories; we do that on the Twitter account. Though we may offer commentary on the stories that we don't cover on the podcast. We have some fun ideas, though.
Until next time - Test over.